Commitments

I made a commitment a while ago to join this Chinese lunar festival show. I agreed to help out by playing the piano, and perhaps arranging a piece.

Yesterday, my mom called and asked if I could go back home (to Maryland) for the Lunar Festival. She said that my cousin, who I have not seen for a long time, will be flying back from Berkeley, and that she wants me to be there too. After all, in Chinese culture the Lunar Festival is a period of time where you celebrate being with your family.

Unfortunately, I had already made a commitment to this Chinese show, and I think the directors are relying on me to get my end of the deal held up. So I told my mom, sorry, I can't.

Sometimes you make a commitment and you wish you hadn't. I do that all the time. It's one of those things that just eats away at you. For example, let's say you marry. 5 years later, your marriage is in shambles and you're filing for a divorce. Both of you are wondering why you made that choice, that commitment, which ate up 5 years of your life when you could have been finding someone better.

Maybe that is a rather cynical view of marriage, but I feel like making commitments is something that a lot of people (including myself) take too lightly. Let's say you make plans to get dinner with a friend one night. That day comes, but then another friend (who you like even more) asks you if you want to grab dinner, so you cancel on that first friend. After all, who cares about commitments, why not do whatever you want?

I used to think like that. I would break off commitments just so I could do the thing I wanted to do most when I felt like it (I'm a very spontaneous person). But then I realized how terrible of a habit that is.

Breaking commitments shows people you have no respect for them, that you have no backbone. That you aren't reliable enough to be held accountable to your word. Your word means nothing.

Of course, you may never see that person again (and believe me, they'll never want to see you either), but that kind of habit eats away at your soul and eventually turns you into this sporadic person that no one really can trust. Once you're that person, you'll lose everything.

So if you don't think you can hold your end of the bargain, don't make the deal/commitment. It's better to say no, than to later cancel because you had something else come up. Of course, that "something" may be an emergency, but most of the time (and we all know this) it's something that is totally irrelevant.